Gladstone Scenic Lookout

Hamelin Station Stay (04.05.2013)

 

We left Kalbarri on Saturday hopping that before we hit Monkey Mia the school holiday would be over.  So to do this we went to spend a day in the Kalbarri National Park. The highlights of this park are: Natural Window and Z-Bend.  

 



Natural Window
 

 

On the way to Z-Bend

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



 

 

 

From the safety of the Z-Bend's lookout you can see the gorge plunges 150 meters to the river below or you can walk down and see the river from close up. The rest of the day (besides couple of more lookouts: Ross Graham and Hawk's Head) we spent driving towards Denham and stopped at the Hamelin Station Stay. Look at the sunset.

 

Sunset at Hamelin Station

Denham (05.05.2013)

 

We found a quite cheep caravan park in Denham and went to explore the Francois Peron National Park. When you hear names like: Little Lagoon and Big Lagoon you expect paradise right? Well you are wrong. 

Little Lagoon
 

We did 120kms sand driving that day and besides Skipjack Point Lookout the rest of the park is not even worth mention.  At the lookout we were lucky to see the  manta ray and the turtle.  Lidia was quite happy with that.






























At the end of the drive we visited the Peron Homestead Precinct which offers a glimpse of life from the 1950's when the park was a working sheep station. There is a natural hot tube fed from an artesian bore near the homestead that originally supplied water to the station's stock and now is popular with visitors. We had a little "dip" in the "hot tub" and it was like 40C in it!!!!!

 

 

Monkey Mia (06.05.2013)

We woke up at 6am to make sure we could get to Monkey Mia before 7:45am as this is the best time to get there to feed dolphins. Look at Lidia, I think this is the first time she is happy to wake up at 6am.

It's just 23kms from Denham so we had almost an hour to kill.  We went around the resort and made some new friend: Frank from France.  The fee entry to the park is just $8.00 per person which was a surprise for us as we were expecting much more.

As you can see from the picture there were more people than dolphins.

 Monkey Mia dolphins are protected to ensure the dolphins maintain their hunting and survival skills. Therefore, the dolphins are only fed a small amount of fish (like 3 or 4 fish per dolphin and their allow to feed just 5 of the same dolphins) so just few people are selected from crowd of onlookers to feed the dolphins.  Lidia wasn't the lucky one the first time but just as we were going to leave the place, dolphins decided to come back. So we stayed for the next "show" and this time, with less tourisms around, Lidia got lucky:).

 

Beside dolpnis you can spot some emus around the resort and turtles in the ocean.

 

On the way back from the Shark Bay we stopped at the Ocean Park Aquarium, which offer a rarely seen insight into the natural habitat of the regions spectacular marine life. We've learnt a lot today about some marine life in WA:) Graham's favourites were stone fish and sharks.

 

After than we had a swim at Shell Beach. An amazing pure white beach that has been created entirely of billions of tiny cockle shells layered up to eight meters deep and stretching for over 120kms.

The water there is so salty that it's easy to just lay down and relax.

 

Hamelin Pool Stromatolites - our next stop. The water at this pool is twice as saline as usual sea water. Shark Bay is one of only two places in the world where living marine stromatolites exist. These living fossils contain microbes similar to those found in 3,500 million year old rocks - the earliest record of life on earth. Stromatolites are rock -like structures built by microbes (single-celled cyanobacteria). This unusual life form grows to about 60cm tall and look like mushroom-shaped rocky domes.

 

 

 

Our place for tonight: a free camp site at the Gladstone Scenic Lookout.